Solid The Rolling Stones

Voodoo Lounge confirmed that the Stones could age gracefully, but it never sounded modern; it sounded classicist. With its successor, Bridges to Babylon, Mick Jagger was determined to bring the Rolling Stones into the '90s, albeit tentatively, and hired hip collaborators like the Dust Brothers (Beck, Beastie Boys) and Danny Saber (Black Grape) to give the veteran group an edge on their explorations of drum loops and samples. Of course, the Stones are the Stones, and no production is going to erase that…

The usual assumption is that the British-issued Rolling Stones albums of the mid-'60s are, like the Beatles' British LPs of the same era, more accurate representations of the group and its work than their American equivalents; the latter were tailored to the U.S. market and usually had singles that had been recorded and released separately added to their programming. The reality, however, is that the group's British LPs were almost as much of a hodgepodge, but just devised differently. The U.K. version of Out of Our Heads actually came out later than its American counterpart by about a month and opens with the roaring, frenetic "She Said Yeah" rather than the soulful slowie "Mercy Mercy" (which follows it here).

Their Satanic Majesties Request has always been disliked by fans, who perceived it as the Rolling Stones trying to emulate the Beatles during the latter's psychedelic phase, and generally not sounding terribly good. The mono mix fixes all of that and then some – indeed, all of a sudden, the album sounds great, and is great. The rhythm instruments are upfront and solid, and from the opening bars of "Sing This All Together" through the punchy break on "In Another Land" to the extended jam on "Sing This All Together (See What Happened)" (as it's printed here), this sounds like the Stones, pounding away hard and heavy, and scarcely like the Beatles at all. Allmusic.